This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UM I films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter 6 ce, while others may be from any type o f computer printer.
T he quality o f this reproduction is dependent upon th e q u ality o f th e copy subm itted. Broken or indistinct print, colored o r poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely afreet reproduction.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send UM I a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion.
Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand com er and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back o f the book.
Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs o r illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact U M I directly to order.
UMI
A Bell & Ifowell Infoimation Company
300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600
The Development o f the Chess Motif in Victorian Fiction by
Glen Robert Downey B.A., McMaster University, 1991 M .A ., McMaster University, 1992
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment o f the Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department o f English
We accept this dissertation as conforming to the required standard
Dr. Herbert FTSmith, Supervisor (Department of English)
Dr. Lisa Surridge, Departmencal Member (Department o f English)
—
---Dr. Anthony B. England, Departmental Member (Department o f English)
Dr. John Money, Outside M em ba4D epartm ent of History)
Dr. Mary Rimmer, External Examiner (Dept, o f English, University of New Brunswick)
^ ® Glen Robert Downey, 1998 University of Victoria
All rights reserved. The dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, without the permission of the author.
Supervisor: Dr. Herbert F. Smith
ABSTRACT
A close critical scrutiny o f Anne Bronte’s The Tenant o f W ildfell H all, Thomas Hardy’s A Pair o f Blue Eyes, and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-G lass reveals that these texts are linked through their use o f a chess metaphor, a device that symbolizes how the central female characters of these works become stalemated in their efforts to achieve autonomy. While the disparate but related paths these characters take can be likened to the predetermined progress of a pawn that travels the length o f a chessboard to become a queen, what Bronte, Hardy, and Carroll all recognize is that this process of becoming is by no means a fulHUing one. Rather, it only serves to reveal how trapped Helen, Elfride, and Alice are within a game in which Victorian society designates them as players of only secondary importance.
There is a general movement towards a more complex integration o f the chess motif as we move from Bronte to Hardy and finally, to Carroll. Bronte’s incidental chess scene is reminiscent o f Thomas Middleton’s use of a similar episode in Women Beware
Women, and shows less sophistication than what Hardy or Carroll achieve because her
moral realism lacks the creative touches found in either Hardy’s use o f symbolic imagery or Carroll’s use o f the fantastic and the unorthodox. However, Bronte juxtaposes her chess game with Helen’s discovery o f Himtingdon’s infidelity to demonstrate how her heroine becomes trapped within a game that she is willingly coerced into playing.
If Bronte suggests that relationships are like chess games played according to rules that seriously limit a woman’s ability to compete. Hardy goes to even greater lengths in
using chess to show how his Wessex universe operates as its own evolving game environment, replete with obstacles and conflicts that prove catastrophic for a player as unprepared as Elfride. Indeed, Hardy’s allusion to Shakespeare’s The Tem pest is critical in demonstrating how in matters of social game-playing, his heroine suffers from the unsatisfactory education she receives from her controlling father. Hardy shows greater sophistication than Bronte in using parallel chess episodes to comment on the progress of Elfride’s relationships, and he even refers to a specific opening system in chess, the Muzio Gambit, whose catalogue of moves prefigures Elfride’s romantic involvements with Stephen and Henry, as well as the unavoidable problems she encounters from the novel’s vengeful Black Queen, Mrs. Jethway. Unlike Bronte, Hardy recognizes that fate is not so careful about giving individuals what they deserve, and that a character like Elfride can pay a heavy price for her romantic misdemeanours.
However, neither Bronte nor Hardy achieves what Carroll does in Through the
Looldng-Glass, a work that can be seen to follow in the tradition of Middleton’s A Game a t Chess, and which not only incorporates the game but structures its plot on the solution
to an unorthodox chess problem. If Bronte is to be celebrated for her honest portrayal o f a woman who becomes trapped in a destructive marriage, and Hardy can be commended for showing how his heroine’s education in social game-playing undermines her relationships with men, Carroll’s genius rests in his ability to illustrate these kinds o f experiences on a chess board through Alice’s dream o f travelling across Looking-Glass land to become a queen. He does not simply give us the impression that a girl’s progress towards womanhood is like a pawn’s promotion in chess, but instead integrates these two
concepts into a single experience. He also keeps the reader off guard by creating an unorthodox chess problem and a curious cast of characters, giving us a sense o f being caught in a game o f our own. The result of all o f this is that we are drawn into Carroll’s games even as we view them as spectators, and the critical giddiness we experience in the process both helps us to share a sense of Alice’s predicament in her frustrated quest to find fulfilment, and allows us to appreciate the underlying thematic implications o f the chess motif in the narrative.
Examiners:
Simth
Dr. LisayS
ent of English)
^ a l MemMember,(Department o f English)
ièhmf Member (Department o f English)
Dr Trthn fifnnrgr fhiMjdr h frm p rr (Department o f History)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...I. CHAPTER I Women Beware Men: Chess and Sexual Politics
in Anne Bronte's The Tenant o f W ildfell H all... 34.
CHAPTER 2 The Positional Sacrifice: Chess and Social Game-Playing in Thomas Hardy’s A Pcdr o f Blue Eyes...59.
CHAPTER 3 The Truth about Pawn Promotion: Chess and the Search for Autonomy in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass... 123.
CONCLUSION...232.
APPENDIX 1 Algebraic Notation... 244.
APPENDIX 2 Chess Terminology... 246.
APPENDIX 3 Chess and Its Complexities... 252.
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. The Solution to Carroll’s Looking-Glass Chess Problem... 123.
Figure 2. The First Non-Move: Alice Meets the Red Queen... 152.
Figure 3. The First Move: 1. ...Q h5...154.
Figure 4. The Red Queen’s Area of Awareness... 156.
Figure 5. The Second Move: 2. d4... 160.
Figure 6. The En-Passant Rule... 163.
Figure 7. What if Alice Played 2. d3-H?... 177.
Figure 8. The Third Move: 3. Qc4... 179.
Figure 9. White Can Checkmate with 3. Q bl#...180.
Figure 10. The White Queen’s Area o f Awareness... 181.
Figure 11. The Second Non-Move: Alice Meets the White Queen...182.
Figure 12. The Fourth Move: 4. Qc5... 185.
Figure 13. The Fifth Move: 5..d5... 187.
Figure 14. The Sixth Move: 6. Qf8... 192.
Figure 15. The Seventh Move: 7. d6...194.
Figure 16. The Eighth Move: 8. Qc8...201.
Figure 17. The Ninth Move: 9..d7...204.
Figure 18. The Tenth Move: 9. ...N e74-... 206.
Figure 19. The Eleventh Move: 10. Nxe7...207.
Figure 20. The Twelfth Move: 11. Nf5...210.
Figure 22. The Fourteenth Move: 12. ...Q e 8 + ... 212.
Figure 23. The Third Non-Move: Alice Becomes Queen...219.
Figure 24. The Fourth Non-Move: Queens Castle... 220.
Figure 25. The Fifth Non-Move: Alice Castles... 221.
Figure 26. The Fifteenth Move: 13. Qa6... 223.
Figure 27. The Sixteenth Move: 14. QxeS#...227.
Figure 28. Algebraic Coordinates... 247.
Figure 29. Available Movement for the Rook... 255.
Figure 30. Available Movement for the Knight... 256.
Figure 31. Available Movement for the Bishop... 257.
Figure 32. How the Chess Board Deals with Euclidean Space... 263.
Figure 33. The Relative Value o f a Pawn... 266.
Figure 34. The Importance o f the Knight in Closed Positions...267.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to take this opportunity to thank a number o f people, all o f whom made working on this dissertation nearly as fun as playing chess itself. My supervisor. Dr. Herbert F. Smith, was the witty and vastly experienced coach who discouraged me from unnecessarily clinging to my dull positional style and who instead persuaded me to analyze every tactical possibility in critically investigating Bronte, Hardy, and Carroll. His unique ability to tell me when I was pushing my pieces around without a plan was crucial to my development as a player. Drs. Lisa Surridge and Anthony England deserve considerable praise both for assuring me that my game was in good form and apprising me of those areas that required some reworking. Drs. John Money and Mary Rimmer are also to be commended for taking great care to look over the final product o f my critical game-playing and provide me with helpful annotations. Finally, 1 would like to thank all o f the chess fans who have supported me throughout my arduous preparations: Dr. Luke Carson for his insights concerning both the dissertation and the conference papers resulting from it. Dr. Kim Blank for his numerous efforts on my behalf. Dr. Michael Best for his enthusiastic interest in my research, my colleagues and friends for their reassurance and motivation, my family for their patient endurance, and Jayn, who was there whenever I thought I was checkmated.
Three common things o f the world—a wife, a chess-board and a harp. —Welsh proverb Chess is as much a mystery as women.
—Cecil Purdy Why had whoever, whatever individuals or group, who had invented modem chess, not made the king the strongest piece and the queen the weakest and not made the object o f the game to protect the queen? That would have been any man’s normal reaction, wouldn’t it? Sheer male vanity would have demanded that. And yet whoever had invented it had done just the opposite. Had a woman invented the game?
—James Jones The Queen’s move is aslant only, because women are so greedy that they will take nothing except by rapine and injustice.
—From the Innocent M orality There has never been a woman chess champion. With her instinctive intuition, a woman knows that chess is a frivolous waste o f time which keeps men from paying due attention to her.
—Clarence Thomas Sadd They’re all weak, all women. They’re stupid compared to men. They shouldn’t play chess, you know. They’re like beginners. They lose every single game against a man.
—Bobby Fischer But if it is asked why the queen is exposed to war, when the condition o f a female is frail and unwarlike, we reply, when husbands go out to battle, it is customary for their women and wives, and the rest o f the family, to live in the camp. And though they do use a bow, and encumber men more by their whims than they destroy the foe by their valour, yet the queen is intended for the king’s help.
-F ro m the Gesta Romanorum ‘How should Friend keep his thoughts on the game while you stand thus disturbing him? What woiUd you here, Kristin? You have never had any skill of these games.’
‘No; I trow you folks think I have no understanding of aught—’ ‘O f one thing I see you have no understanding’ said her fether sharply, ‘and that is how it beseems a wife to speak to her husband. Better were it you should go and keep your young ones in bounds—’
Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary’s men, but a little uncertain also about your own; if your Knight could shuffle himself on to a new square on the sly; if your Bishop, in disgust at your Castling, could wheedle your Pawns out o f their places; and if your Pawns, hating you because they are Pawns, could make away from their appointed posts that you m i^ t get checkmate on a sudden. You might be the longest-headed of deductive reasoners, and yet you might be beaten by your own Pawns. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt.
Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for his instruments.
—From George Eliot’s Felix H olt
1. The Great Victorian Chess Scenes and Chess Novels Shortly after its inception into western culture and once the Church accepted that it was not a heretical pursuit,' chess became acknowledged as a suitable metaphor for various human activities. Nonetheless, considering for a moment how medieval texts like
Huon o f Bordeaux (c. 1200) and Garin de Afontglane (13th c.) use chess as a metaphor
to demonstrate the necessity of preserving social and political hierarchies, and how a Renaissance playwright like Thomas Middleton, in A Game at Chess (1624), uses the game to represent the intrigue of the Anglo-Spanish conflict, one might be tempted to
‘Some early forms of the game used dice and thus were associated with gambling. In A History o f Chess (1913), H, J. R. Murray refers to a letter written in AD 1061 by Petrus Damiani, (Cardinal Bishop o f Ostia, in which Damiani is able to convince the Bishop of Florence o f the game’s sinfulness: "The Bishop thought that if only he played chess without dice, he was keeping within canon law, but Damiani argues, *No: the game is a dice game, and to omit the dice is a mere subterfuge or evasion. The canons forbid not merely the dice but the game also. ’ And the Bishop accepts the contention (which is quite a plausible one for any one who had seen chess generally played with dice, and who knew nothing o f the history o f chess) and acknowledges his fault" (409).
hypothesize that in a literary context the game is little more than a vehicle for allegory. However, the nineteenth-century writers examined in this dissertation recognized that in addition to serving as an allegorical construct, chess could be used as a metaphor for any complex system that subjects its participants to a set of binding rules under which they are compelled to play.^ The exploration o f this idea consequently brings together three Victorian texts which otherwise might have little chance o f being juxtaposed for the purposes o f critical analysis: Anne Bronte’s The Tenant o f W ildfell H all (1848), Thomas Hardy’s A P air o f Blue Eyes (1873), and Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-G lass (1872).
Cursory examinations o f these works suggest that they share little more than the broad designation o f "Victorian novel." Bronte’s didactic tale is written with a pronounced moral agenda in an effort to warn readers against the dangers o f profligacy and dissolution; Hardy’s novel is a careful fusion o f realism and ironic coincidence examining the failure of individuals to communicate; and Carroll’s nonsense fiction is a philosophical fantasy story that satirizes Victorian society while trying to come to terms with the ephemeral nature of human existence. However, a closer examination o f these works reveals a number o f important similarities: (1) each has suffered the censure of
^There do not appear to be any significant examples o f the chess game being used as a prominent literary motif in eighteenth-century English fiction. It is difficult to say whether this was due to the rise in popularity of card games during this period (for instance, Alexander Pope uses the game o f ombre in "The Rape of the Lock") o r because writers felt that the metaphor had been sufficiently explored. Something else to consider is that throughout the period in question the centre o f the chess world was not England but France, with PhiUdor and his circle making the O rfé de la Régence the first modem chess club.
critical scholarship, especially in comparison with other works written either by the same author or by other prominent Victorians; (2) each has received considerable recognition for its radicalism in examining Victorian issues; (3) finally, and most significantly for our purposes, each uses the game o f chess as a metaphor in chronicling the experiences o f a young female character as she endures (symbolically in Alice’s case) the trials of becoming an adult.
A number o f contemporary critics have recognized The Tenant o f W ildfell H all as a landmark feminist text, but it had long been unfavourably compared with the works of Aime’s more celebrated sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Although critics are by no means incorrect in suggesting that Tenant lacks the psychological complexity o f Jane Eyre (1847) or W uthering H eights (1847), the novel has unnecessarily suffered from the dismissive labels imposed on it by earlier scholars, begirming with Charlotte’s disparaging comments in her preface to the 1850 edition o f W uthering H eights and Agnes Grey. Charlotte claims that Aime had made a poor choice o f subject in her second novel:
She had, in the course o f her life, been called on to contemplate near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects o f talents misused and faculties abused; hers was a naturally sensitive, reserved and dejected nature; what she saw sank very deeply into her mind: it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course, with fictitious characters, incidents and situations), as a warning to others, (qtd in Andrews 27)
This critical attitude has been perpetuated in our own century by such critics as Winifred Gérin and Margaret Lane, the latter of whom in The D rug-Like Bronté Dream (1952) patronizingly designates Arme "as ‘a Bronte without genius, ’ but as one who certainly had her share o f the Bronte temperament" (Lane 31). For her own part, Gérin makes the
unconvincing argument that the didactic nature o f The Tenant o f W ildfell H all precludes it from having literary merit: "It was written too obviously as a work o f propaganda, a treatise against drunkenness, to be considered a work o f art" (Gérin 39). This sort of argument has proven damaging to the text because it discourages the critical reader from investigating the novel on anything more than a superficial level, and it is only through the combined efforts o f contemporary critics that Bronte’s work has managed to receive a fair assessment.
Hardy’s third novel, A Pcdr o f Blue Eyes, has been critically pilloried for its lapses in realism, characterization o f rural life, and choice o f narrative structure. Indeed, instead of recognizing the text as having literary merit in itself, numerous critics have only assigned it value as either an example of the weaknesses of Hardy’s early writing, or as a precursor to his later and more celebrated novels, specifically Tess o f the
D ’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). The critical scholarship o f Edmund
Blunden, Lascelles Abercrombie, and J. I. M. Stewart is too focused on trying to expose the novel’s artistic inconsistencies to be concerned with Hardy’s complex handling o f the chess metaphor. For example, while discussing the novel in Thomas H ardy (1941), Blunden negates the text before allowing himself a reasonable opportunity to investigate it: "We do not get far in A Pair o f Blue Eyes before we are entertained, not as the author can have intended us to be, by his remarkable spasms of contorted and straggling English" (190). Naturally, this approach can only lead to imprudent attempts to remedy the text by adopting a corrective strategy:
Hardy in A Pair o f Blue Eyes b ^ in s to work in a cause which moved him strongly—the boy Smith is not of the social rank o f Elfride, and there lies
drama, towards a triumphal or a lamentable end, which would have employed these lovers as symbols o f a far wider world than themselves. Or again, in the sketchy character o f Knight, I believe that there is the sufficient source for a complete story with a combination o f love’s winding ways and o f a special dilemma in it—the effect o f a great intellectual passion and pursuit upon the man’s capacities and experiences in emotional relations. (Blunden 196-97)
This sort o f critical mindset has prevented a number o f scholars from recognizing how a close scrutiny o f the particulars of Hardy’s novel, specifically his use o f a controlling chess metaphor, can benefit textual analysis. Indeed, by recognizing how this particular motif is part of a larger conceptual scheme in the text, the critical reader can begin to understand how Hardy’s Wessex operates as its own evolving game environment.
Carroll’s Through the Looldng-Glass is often seen by scholars as a less successful novel than its more celebrated companion piece, A lice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Critics have interpreted Looking-G lass as the more controlled and less spontaneous of the two works, more the product o f Dodgson the mathematical logician and Oxford lecturer than Carroll the story-teller. Thus, although it has been assigned a higher place than either of the critically disparaged Sylvie and Bruno books (1889 and 1893), it has been unfavourably compared with its companion novel since its publication:
There was general agreement, among those who considered the question, that Through the Looking-Glass was not so good as its predecessor. The reasons given for this varied. It was perhaps too contrived—"Mr. Carroll makes rather too much use here o f the Red and White pieces in the game of chess"—o r not so inventive.^ Possibly the expectations raised by A lice ’s
^ e quotation that Cripps cites is from The Illustrated London News (Dec. 16, 1871, p. 599). She also refers to a review o f the novel given in The M anchester
Guardian (Dec. 27, 1871, p. 3.) which sees an imequivocal discrepancy between the two
adequately. (Cripps 40)
In "Escape Through the Looking-Glass" (1945), Florence Becker Lennon calls the novel a "masterpiece-only a shade less than W onderland” (Lennon 66), but then adds that "it already exudes the ripe flavor o f approaching decay and disintegration into the cruel (on paper) and unusual Mr. Dodgson and the sentimental-religious Louisa Caroline, as one o f the Oxford parodists signed ‘The Vulture and the Husbandman'" (66). Harold Bloom takes a similar position in his introduction to Lew is Carroll (1987): "The movement from ‘You’re nothing but a pack o f cards!’ to 1 can’t stand this any longer!’ is a fair representation of the relative aesthetic decline the reader experiences as she goes from
A lice's Adventures in W onderland to Through the Looldng-Glass. Had the first book
never existed, our regard for the second would be unique and immense, which is only another way of admiring how the first A lice narrative is able to avoid any human affect as mundane as bitterness" (5-6). However, the sardonic tone that runs throughout
Looking-G lass is central to its thematic complexity, and the notion that it lacks the
spontaneity or freshness o f its predecessor should not in itself be a source o f criticism.
we cannot say that we think Alice’s last adventures by any means equal to her previous ones. Making every allowance for the lack o f novelty, and our own more highly raised expectation, it seems to us that the parodies are somewhat less delightfully absurd, the nonsense not so quaint, the transitions rather more forced" (40). With respect to the novel’s early critical reception by children, Cripps admits Üiat both W onderland and
Looking-G lass were still among die most popular children’s books even at the time of
Carroll’s death, but not necessarily e q u ^ y esteemed: "The P all M all G azette, for instance, in an article entitled ‘What the Chüdren Like,’ gave the result o f a request to children to list their favourite books. To pass to the positive, the verdict is so natural that it will surprise no normal person. The wiimer is ‘Alice in Wonderland’; ‘Through the Looking-Glass’ is in the twenty, but much lower down. Perfectly correct’" (42).
Although each o f the works under discussion has received a significant amount of critical censure, each has also gained attention for its surprising radicalism. Contemporary critics have demonstrated an ability to overcome the traditional prejudices that have prevented deeper investigations of these works in the past and have subsequently discovered in them a number o f subversively modem ideas.^ In " ‘Imbecile Laughter’ and ‘Desperate Earnest’ in The Tenant o f W ildfell H all" (1982), Juliet McMaster rejects the notion that she should try to defend Bronte’s novel rather than simply investigate it: "1 proceed on the assumption that The Tenant is a fine and important Victorian novel that deserves serious critical attention as a work o f fiction, and apart from biographical considerations" (352). From this critical position, McMaster is able to concentrate on how the structural and thematic pattern of the story-within-a-story "is supported at the dramatic level by the vivid delineation of irresponsible laughter and moral seriousness in the sayings and doings of characters" (368). In effect, the critic argues that Bronte demonstrates an awareness not only o f the dangers o f dissolution and profligacy o r o f the moral standards that differentiated the Regency and Victorian periods, but by associating these different standards with her characters she shows her acute (and remarkably contemporary) understanding o f the inequitable distributions o f social power to men and women in the nineteenth century.
^See, for instance, Barbara and Gareth Lloyd Evans’s Everym an’s Companion to
the B rontë’s (1982), Edward Chitham’s and Tom Winnifirith’s Brontë Facts cmd Brontë Problems (1983), N. M. Jacobs’s "Gender and Layered Narrative in W uthering H eights
and The Tenant o f W ildfell H all" {Journal o f N arrative Technique 16: [1986]), and Jan B. Gordon’s "Gossip, Diary, Letter, Text: Anne Brontë’s Narrative Tenant and the Problematic o f the Gothic Sequel" {ELH 51: [1984]).
In "The Question o f Credibility in Anne Brontë’s The Tenant o f W ildfell H all" (1982), Arlene M. Jackson acknowledges that Brontë’s writing lacks the qualities which have made Jane Eyre and W uthering H eights canonical texts, but implies that this should not prevent critics from appreciating the important contribution of a novel like Tenant: "Without the searing intensity o f Charlotte or the dramatic inventiveness o f Emily, however, Anne demonstrates through her writing that she has a conscious, perceptive control o f her frctional materials. This control gives Anne Brontë a claim to artistic merit in her own right" (198). Jackson recognizes that the often brutal realism of The Tenant
o fW il^ e ll H all has a way o f exploding Victorian myths about gender roles in "revealing
a marital discord full of suffering, agony, and even ugliness" (2(X)). Thus, like McMaster, Jackson understands the novel’s uniqueness in the way it asks bold questions about the power structures that define sexual relationships during the Victorian period:
Anne Brontë also answers a question that other novels of her time do not ask: what happens to a marriage and to the innocent partner when one partner (specifrcally, the male) leads a solipsistic life, where personal pleasures are seen as deserved, where maleness and the role of husband is tied to the freedom to do as one wants, and femaleness and the role o f wife is linked to providing service and pleasure not necessarily sexual, but including daily praise and ego-boosting and, quite simply, constant attention. (203)
Although she acknowledges Anne’s limitations as a writer in the opening paragraph of her article, Jackson is able to set these aside and concentrate on specific gender issues in the novel that are deserving of elucidation and critical commentary.
Recent critics have also done a significant service to Hardy’s A Pair o f B lue Eyes in re-evaluating elements o f the novel that have been traditionally reproached. For instance, in Thomas H ardy’s H eroines: A Chorus o f Priorities (1986), Pamela Jekel
begins by observing that "[i]n an exploration o f the critical commentary available on the character o f Elfride Swancourt, it seems clear that many reviewers have misunderstood— and consequently misrepresented—one o f Hardy’s most provocative and revealing heroines" (44). Jekel recognizes that although critics like Norman Page and D. H. Lawrence make perceptive insights into Elfride’s characterization, their arguments prove limiting and underestimate both her strength and complexity o f character:
Lawrence’s implication is that, indeed, the tragedy is not very great at all, since Elfride has not had the strength to throw off even "the first little hedge of convention." In fact, the story o f Elfride is at least poignant if not a classical tragedy, precisely because she does have the potential for such strength, because ^ e does have many heroic qualities, and because she is betrayed by love—both false and true—and sadly, betrayed with her own complicity. (45)
Thus, the critic acknowledges that Hardy gives Elfride sufficient complexity that her striving for happiness and control over her life becomes heroic, "and that the inability of most to see that truth, creates Hardy’s ironic tone and, ultimately, his pessimism" (51-52). Although Jekel is at times highly critical o f Hardy’s text,® she recognizes and appreciates those elements o f the novel that make it decidedly modem: "Hardy explores still-uncharted psychological frontiers, behaviours and explanations for them which were not then familiar. His instructive understanding o f the reasons for Knight’s ‘spare love-making’ and Elfride’s distaste for Stephen’s ‘pretty,’ almost feminine handsomeness, gives the novel a contemporary flavour in spite o f its gothic construction" (55).
In Women and Sexuality in the Novels o f Thomas Hardy (1988), Rosemarie Morgan sees A Pair o f Blue Eyes as a radical text in which Hardy strikes back against the
Victorian convention o f regarding female sexuality as a pathological disorder and denying women a sexual reality (2). For her, the "contradictions and shifting perspectives" (28) which critics frequently cite as evidence o f the novel’s faulty construction are crucial to Hardy’s textual strategy: "Alternatively displacing and reinstating his heroine as he grapples with propriety on the one hand and an unconventional characterization on the other. Hardy ingeniously maps a course o f increasingly fruitless voyages to mirror that unrewarding journey to womanhood which offers no prizes to the female challenger" (28). Morgan notes that only through a process o f meticulous critical scrutiny can the novel’s inconsistencies be understood as part o f a literary stratagem that takes a radical approach to the exploration o f gender issues: "The more important part o f this analysis... lies in the close attentive reading that is, to my mind, critical to an understanding o f Hardy’s radicalism, his defiance o f convention, his rejection o f prevailing sexual codes and practices, his commitment to the sexual reality o f his women" (28).
Carroll’s Through the Looking-G lass has also been recognized for its surprising radicalism despite being very much a literary product o f its time. Although it is not traditionally thought o f as a feminist novel in the way that The Tenant o f W ildfell H all or A P air o f Blue Eyes are often re-appraised by contemporary critics. Through the
Looldng-G lass is nevertheless recognized for its keen understanding o f Alice’s
predicament, most notably in her discovery that "being a Queen...offers neither the security o f attachment nor the sovereignty o f freedom to which she refers in her opening words to the White Knight: T don’t want to be anybody’s prisoner. I want to be a Queen’" (Rackin 113). As Susan A. Walsh argues in "Darling Mothers, Devilish
Queens: The Divided Woman in Victorian Fantasy" (1987), Carroll shows how Alice is ultimately a prisoner o f her inability to change the game in which she rinds herself because her only models o f behaviour are the helpless but amiable White Queen and the responsible but mean-tempered Red Queen:
By the end o f both Wonderland books a beleaguered Alice has had enough and summarily shatters the dream worlds by withdrawing belief in the system o f relationships they espouse...Even though she recognizes the artiricial quality of this maddening disorder, that these games...are constructs o f culture and not of nature, Alice can not exert control from the outside because the "inside" dictates the terms of what she must control. As a world-spiimer she may exercise the creator’s prerogative to destroy her rictions but not, ultimately, to invest them with forms other than those provided by nineteenth-century convention. (34)
The subversive irony o f Carroll’s novel, o f course, is that while it appears to have the happüy-ever-after ending of a traditional children’s story, Alice’s promotion to a Queen only comes to represent the crowning moment o f her powerlessness. The bitterness that is engendered throughout Alice’s frustrating quest and which culminates during the coronation feast gives the novel its insurgent tone. Indeed, Harold Bloom’s earlier criticism o f the novel’s bitterness is qualified by his admission that this is perhaps what gives the novel its modem appeal: "Bitterness keeps breaking in as we read Through the
Looking-G lass, which may explain how weirdly and perpetually contemporary this second
and somewhat lesser work now seems" (6).
Carroll’s novel shows its modernism (and to a certain extent, its postmodernism) in a number o f other ways; if the author’s mathematical forays into the realm o f symbolic logic make his work a natural precursor to Bertrand Russell’s and Alfred North Whitehead’s Principia M athematica (1910-1913), and his interest in the possibilities of
language look forward to Joyce, then his fascination with sign systems in the A lice books makes him a forerunner to contemporary approaches to the field o f semiotics:
Carroll’s concerns extend beyond the explication of communication functions to probe the provocative semiotic question argued by Humpty Dumpty: "who is to be master?" we over the signs we manipulate, or the signs over us through the subtle pressures exerted by convention and conditioning? In Carroll’s universe, the "masters" of signification are poets, logicians, and madmen. Through his use of imagery and parable to illustrate his humorous exposé o f the problems of semiosis, Carroll reveals a profound concern with underlying epistemological issues which anticipate neo-Kantian and Saussurian approaches to that branch o f science known as "semiotic." (Mandelker 102)
Finally, Carroll’s use o f nested structures in making Alice a pawn within a game within a pair of conflicting dreams looks forward to twentieth-century writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar, who manipulate traditional linear narrative structures and invest them with topological complexity.®
“Topology is the branch of mathematics dealing with the qualitative study of abstract spaces. Anticipated and developed through the combined energies of Euler, Moebius, Cantor and others, and eventually emerging in 1895 with Poincaré’s Analysis
Situs, topology serves as an approach to spatial configurations that "typifies a sharp break
from the styles prevailing in nineteenth-century analysis" (Boyer 652-53). It acknowledges that structurally disparate spaces are equivalent if they can be mapped to one another by a continuous function. For instance, certain geometrical shapes differ substantially in their Cartesian structure, but topology recognizes them as equivalent, or
homeomorphic, if they can be shown to be continuous deformations o f one other. The
fundamental goal o f topology is to discover "a serviceable set of rules or procedures for recognizing spaces in £dl dimensions. In such a classification scheme, two spaces would belong to the same topological class if they had the same basic, overall structure although they might differ drastically in their details" (G rolier M ultimedia Encyclopedia).
The notion o f a connected network provides a fundamental link between mathematical topology and chess, a game that involves an ever-evolving network of choices leading to a limitless number of possible outcomes. In The Inner Game o f Chess, Andrew Soltis observes that calculation in chess has a definite shape: "A calculated sequence resembles a tree; branches represent the subvariations, and the trunk represents the sequence’s main line" (Soltis 84). By recognizing that chess serves as a metaphor not only for hierarchical systems but for the whole process of assessment and decision.
Although they share profound similarities in the way they have been both censured for their perceived artistic deficiencies and critically lauded for their radicalism, the works under investigation are most readily linked through their use of chess as a metaphor to investigate the fiite o f their female protagonists as they endure the trials o f becoming an adult. Brontë’s incorporation o f a chess metaphor in The Tenant o f W ildfell
H all shows less sophistication than what Hardy o r Carroll manage to achieve in their
respective narratives, but although the game between Helen Huntingdon and Walter Hargrave is incidental and does not appear to be allusively coimected with other parts o f the novel, it is juxtaposed with Helen’s discovery o f Huntingdon’s infidelity to emphasize the game’s importance as a metaphor for the difficulties faced by a woman who is forced to play games controlled by men.
If Brontë demonstrates that relationships are like chess games played according to rules that seriously limit a woman’s ability to compete. Hardy goes to even greater lengths in using chess to show how his Wessex universe operates as its own evolving game environment, replete with conflicts and cross-purposed goals that prove catastrophic for a player as unprepared as Elfride. Indeed, Hardy’s impressionable heroine is the novel’s principal player and quintessential plaything, the engineer of positional combinations and daring sacrifices, and the overprotected but isolated piece striving to
topological analysis provides a way of rendering textual meaning comprehensible on previously unaccessible levels. As a topology, chess does not simply relate characters and events to those of the game—it is not merely the vehicle for allegorical analysis—but supplies the reader with the necessary tools to interpret the textual universe as its own evolving game environment, and as a part o f the much larger arena in which the author and reader are constantly at play.
find its place on the field o f social combat. Hardy shows a greater level o f sophistication than Bronte in using parallel chess episodes to comment on the progress and eventual failure o f Elfiide’s relationships. He even goes to the extent of referring to a specific opening system in the game o f chess, the Muzio Gambit, whose catalogue o f moves prefigures not only Elfride’s romantic involvements with Stephen Smith and Henry Knight, but the unavoidable problems in which she becomes involved with the novel’s vengefiil Black Queen, Mrs. Jethway. Bronte assigns each character the fate they deserve, with Huntingdon meeting a grim demise for his profligacy and Helen finding happiness with Markham after years o f suffering, but Hardy recognizes that fete is not so careful about giving individuals what they deserve, and that a character like ElMde can be forced to pay a heavy price for seemingly harmless romantic misdemeanours.
However, neither Bronte nor Hardy is quite able to achieve with the chess metaphor what Carroll does in Through the Looking-G lass, a novel that not only incorporates the game o f chess but whose plot is structured on the solution to an unorthodox chess problem that is played out by Alice and the Looking-Glass chessmen. If Bronte can be praised for her realistic portrayal o f a woman who becomes trapped in a destructive marriage, and Hardy is to be commended for capturing how his heroine’s education in social game-playing problematizes her relationships with men, Carroll’s genius rests in his ability to illustrate these kinds o f experiences on a chess board through Alice’s dream of being a pawn and travelling across the Looking-Glass landscape to become a queen. Carroll does not simply give us the impression that a girl’s progress towards womanhood is something like a pawn’s promotion in chess, but rather he fiiUy
integrates these two ideas into a single experience.
Carroll keeps the reader constantly off guard through his creation o f an unorthodox chess problem and a curious cast o f characters, the D ram atis Personae, giving us a sense o f being perpetually caught somewhere between recognition and confusion, and encouraging our immediate identification with Alice. The novel creates a series o f games for the reader whose answers often lead to more difficult questions, just as one’s analysis of a chess position becomes more difricult as the player is forced to look further and further ahead. While Alice is made to run quickly in order to stay in the same place and distribute Looking-Glass plum cake before cutting it, we are similarly confronted with numerous nonsense puzzles and exercises in mathematical logic. The result o f all of this is that we are drawn into the game even as we view it as spectators, and the critical giddiness we experience in the process both helps us to share some sense of Alice’s predicament in her frustrated quest to find fulfilment, and allows us to appreciate the underlying thematic implications o f the chess motif in the narrative.
2. The Tradition of the Chess Motif
2.1. The Medieval Period
By using chess in their narratives, Bronte, Hardy, and Carroll are drawing on a literary tradition that stretches back through the Renaissance to the Middle Ages. As the historian H. J. R. Murray observes in A H istory o f Chess (1913), the game was readily incorporated into medieval literature as a tool for allegory: "It will be a matter for no surprise to any one familiar with the characteristics o f European literature o f the Middle Ages to discover that works were written in which attempts were made to give a
symbolical or allegorical explanation o f the game of chess, or to find parallels between the organization of human life and activities and the different names and powers o f the chessmen" (529)/ Indeed, chess is a recurring motif in medieval literature, frequently serving as a metaphor o f the divinely ordered nature of the universe, and o f the individual human being’s socially ordained place within it. In medieval texts, the chess board is viewed as a microcosm o f the field of universal conflict. The chess pieces symbolize the human forces involved in that conflict as well as the divine providence that carefully oversees the divisions o f relative human worth on the great chain o f being. The game
M edieval chess moralities collectively reinforce the logic o f social and political hierarchies by showing how this logic is reflected in the game. The oldest of these works is the Quaedam m oralitas de scaccario, or Innocent M orality, in which the descriptions of the chess board and its pieces are given in terms of what these things symbolically parallel in the world of human experience: "The world resembles a chessboard which is chequered white and black, the colours showing the two conditions of life and death, or praise and blame. The chessmen are men o f this world who have a common birth, occupy different stations and hold different titles in this life, who contend together, and finally have a common fate which levels all ranks. The king often lies under the other pieces in this bag" (qtd. in Murray 530). Eales observes that in the wake o f the
Quaedam m oralitas, eight new chess moralities were written between 1250 and 1475, all
o f which appear to use the game’s allegorical possibilities to urge a maintenance o f the status quo. Evidence of this can be found in the Gesta Romanorum: "Though all men may be equal in death (after the game), they are certainly not equal in life (during the game): ‘And therefore let us not change o f our estates, no more than the chessmen, when they be put away in the bag. Then there is no difference who be above or who be beneath, and so by the Spirit o f Lowliness we may come to the jo y o f Heaven’" (qtd. in Eales 66). Eales goes on to add that the same sentiment is expressed in the Innocent
M orality, which "urged common men to plod steadily onwards like pawns, not deviating
in order to gain possessions or improve their situation, the better to reach salvation and their true reward" (66). Perhaps the most important of medieval chess moralities. Jacobus de Cessolis’s Liber de moribus "drew on the notion, already prevalent, that chess was a symbolic representation o f society and imparted to that notion a much greater force and precision" (67). For instance, although de Cessolis recognized that pawns in chess were essentially the same, he differed from previous writers by explaining each individually in terms o f the profession it represented (66-67).
itself represents the symbolic, ordered interaction o f these human and divine forces, serving to play and replay the medieval concept o f the universe in miniature. Medieval literary texts featuring chess games reinforce the wisdom o f respecting social and political hierarchies, and the dangers that can arise when these hierarchies are foolishly challenged.
For instance, medieval myths concerning the origins o f chess were devised in an effort to validate the hierarchical nature of medieval European society and to discourage those who would question it. These myths were important in that "since chess was a man-made diversion, any meaning concealed within it could hardly be inherent in nature like arithmetic or harmonic relationships; it must have been put there by the original inventor" (Eales 64). The most commonly accepted legend concerning the game’s genesis was that it had been invented by a wise man as a means for corrective instruction. The effectiveness o f the myth lies in its deep-seated parallels with certain biblical stories that deal not simply with divine correction, but the theme o f humanity as the archetypal overreacher. For example, as the biblical origin o f linguistic difference represented in the Tower o f Babel myth sees language serving as an agent o f both punishment and reform, the very same can be said concerning chess, and its mythical genesis as a medium for corrective instruction. In at least two European legends that deal with the origins of the game, chess functions as an instrument for altering the behaviour o f despotic rulers who have ruthlessly murdered their fathers:
In the first, an Eastern philosopher invents the game in the reign o f Evil Merodach, regularly presented in the Middle Ages as a monstrous sadist. Evil Merodach chopped up the body o f his father Nebuchadnezzar into three hundred pieces and threw them to three hundred vultures. Wise men
then invented chess to cure him o f his madness. The other version of this story has a philosopher called Justus inventing chess in order to reform a tyrant. Juvenilis. In both these stories the son murders his father and a wise man invents the game as therapy. (Cockbum 100)
Just as God’s confounding o f language among the men and women at Babel foils their hubristic challenge, chess thwarts the realization o f murderous fantasies through the process of sublimation, by replaying the crime o f father murder in a circumscribed game environment. God occupies humanity in a game o f frustrated communication, which prevents them from continuing their sinful and hubristic construction o f the Tower, and chess occupies Meradoch and Juvenilis in a game that sublimates their patricidal tendencies. Within the context o f the Babel myth, linguistic difference is a mark of man’s post-lapsarian nature; it is a reminder both o f the sinful act and o f God’s carefully devised solution. Similarly, the patricide myths surrounding the origins o f chess suggest that the game both reenacts Merodach’s murder o f Nebuchadnezzar (or Juvenilis’s murder of his father) and represents the solution to violence. Just as the Babel legend would have recalled the error of human ambition, the medieval player must have certainly recognized—as he or she was no doubt meant to—that the legends about chess revealed the folly of overstepping one’s pre-ordained station in life.
Medieval literature also inaugurates the convention of the woman either playing chess against a male counterpart or serving as the object of a game played between male adversaries. In Garin de M ontglane, a French poem o f the Charlemagne cycle, the King challenges the renowned Garin to a high-stakes chess game: "If Garin wins he is to have the realm o f France and Charlemagne’s Queen to wife; if he loses he is to lose his head" (Murray 737). After some hesitation, Garin accepts the stakes, defeats Charlemagne, and
finds himself in the position to lay claim to France, but he refuses to take advantage and instead accq)ts the town o f Montglane (737). Garin understands that while winning the game does not undermine it as a metaphor o f divine order, claiming the stake does because it renders meaningless the preservation o f divinely ordained hierarchies. However, there are no such choices available to Charlemagne’s wife; as the object of the chess game, she is forced to await passively its outcome.
In Floire et Blanchefleur (12th c.), a woman is once again depicted as the passive object of a chess game; the hero uses chess to rescue a maiden held captive in a Saracen prison, not by bold and bloody means, but by cleverly tricking the porter: "He learns that the porter o f the prison is very covetous and a keen chess-player, and uses this knowledge to gain access to the dimgeon. He induces the porter to challenge him to play at chess, and refuses to play except for a considerable wager. They play on three successive days, and Floire allows the porter to win on each occasion. The porter wins the stakes...but Floire obtains admission to the prison" (Murray 737).
In Huon o f Bordeaux, King Yvorin’s daughter is both a player and the stake of her chess game with Huon: "yf she wynne thou shalt lese thy hede / & y f thou canst mate her...thou shalt haue her one nyght in thy bed / to do with her at thy pleasure, & a c. marke of money there with" (Murray 738). Although the daughter has superior chess skills, she is unable to prevent herself from M ling in love with Huon during the course o f the game and subsequently loses, but the hero releases the King from the wager for
a hundred marks (Murray 738).' The tale makes clear that King Yvorin’s daughter is a victim o f her inability to control her passion, and despite the fact that she seems to be given the opportunity to compete on level terms, her ability to defeat Huon is undermined by the stakes for which they are playing.
2.2. The Renaissance
The use of symbolic o r allegorical chess games in English Renaissance literature is certainly indebted to the works we have been discussing, but it is by no means limited by them. The most prominent examples o f literary chess metaphors dining this period
"Despite his chicanery, Huon understands his position in the social hierarchy and wisely exercises moral restraint when the situation arises. The hero recognizes that it is not his place to hold the king to his promise, and like Garin, he accepts a token in return.
"During the latter part o f the fifteenth century, chess underwent sudden and significant changes to its quietly evolving medieval form; "Suddenly castling was introduced, pawns gained the privilege of moving two squares forwards at their first turn, and the queen was transformai at a stroke from a waddling cripple (the Arabic vizier) to a unit o f devastating ferocity" (Keene 24). With these additional powers o f movement aribrded to the various pieces, chess was transformed from the static and predictable contest o f old into a more dynamic and unpredictable game.
In medieval chess, the queen’s movement was limited to one diagonal square in any direction. This factor alone made the game considerably slower than we loiow it, because the queen was denied the extensive movement and scope of her contemporary counterpart. Because the medieval queen had to be diagonally adjacent to the enemy in order to attack it, an opponent could generally prepare to counter the threat. In contrast, the modem queen can attack a combination of pieces from various regions o f the board, and can often do so in the course o f a single move, making one’s defence against such an attack significantly more difficult. The queen’s ability to initiate attacks was also helped by the implementation o f a double-move first move for the pawns. In the medieval game, pawns were only permitted to move one square forward at a time, but the new rule allowed for the im m e^ate centralization o f both the pawns and the pieces. To counteract these heightened abilities of attack, castling was incorporated as a dynamic defensive move which brought the king to the safety o f the comer while mobilizing one o f the rooks for activity in the centre. Ultimately, the changes that took place in chess during the late Medieval and early Renaissance periods tumed what was becoming little more than a tedious and often predictable exercise in logic into an increasingly more dynamic game.
are found in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) and both Thomas Middleton’s
Women Beware Women (c. 1621) and A Game at Chess (1624),“ works in which the
game’s metaphorical possibilities are explored with varying degrees o f complexity. Chess itself was becoming part o f an increasingly complex debate which manifested itself in the contradictory social attitudes towards the game that could be found in technical chess maniiflls and other literary texts of the time, such as courtesy books.
In effect, the Renaissance gentleman was encouraged by one group of critics to have a thorough knowledge o f chess because o f the intellectual exercise it afforded, and discouraged by others from spending a great deal of time studying the game. For instance, Thomas Elyot’s The G ouem our (1531) celebrates chess for its ability to sharpen a player’s intellectual faculties:
The chesse, o f all games wherin is no bodily exercise, is moste to be commended; for therin is right subtile engine, whereby the wytte is made more sharpe and remembrance quickened. And it is the more commendable and also commodiouse if the players haue radde the moralization of the chesse, and when they playe do think upon it: which bokes be in englisshe. But they be very scarse, be cause fewe men do seekee in plaies for vertue or wisedome. (qtd. in Knight and Guy 1)
Similarly, in The Haven o f H ealth and Inform ation Made fo r the Com fort o f Students (1612), Thomas Cogan promotes the game as a source of mental calisthenics for young scholars: "This ancient game called the Chesse is an earnest exercise o f the minde and convenient for students, and may easily be provided to be alwaies readie in their
”‘Women Beware Women was not entered into the Stationer’s Register until 1653,
a considerable period o f time after Middleton’s death (Clarroll WBW, xiii). However, although there has been controversy in dating the play, most scholars agree that the evidence points to 1621 rather than an earlier date like 1613-14 (xiii-xiv).
chambers" (qtd in Knight and Guy 2). In addition, Arthur Saul’s The Famous Game o f
Chesse-Play (1614) implies that the game deserves a better reputation, not simply because
o f the intellectual skill it demands but because it is free o f those undesirable qualities often associated with other table games:
O that this game were rightly esteemed of, according to his worth: It is many yeeies since 1 could play this game, and as yet 1 neuer knew any fall out at the same: for a man cannot be offended with him who he playeth withall, but rather blame himselfe for not goueming his owne men better...it is apparant what quarrels and sodaine stabbings happen at other games, with cheating and cosening one another, from all which enormities this is free, hauing the glory aboue all other games, for a peaceable and a Princely exercise. (Saul n.pag)
Knight and Guy also cite the passionate appeal of William Drummond of Hawthomden in his E pistle in Works (1655): "But if we shall have a desire o f change of thoughts, let us not refuse the Chesse, the onely Princely Game (next Government) in the World, yes the true image and pourtraiet o f it, and training of Kings" (2).
However, Baldisare (Zastiglione’s Book o f the C ourtier (1527) argues that chess can put an unreasonable demand on those who seek to master it: "anyone who wishes to become an outstanding player must...give to it as much time and study as he would to learning some noble science or performing well something or other o f importance; and yet for all his pains when all is said and done all he knows is a game. Therefore as far as chess is concerned we reach what is a very rare conclusion: that mediocrity is more to be praised than excellence" (qtd in Eales 78). While Castliglione warns the player to strive for mediocrity, his advice is by no means as critical o f the game as that found in Michel Eyquem de Montaigne’s Les Essais (1580): "To what degree does this ridiculous diversion molest the soul, when all her energies are summoned together upon this trivial
account" (qtd in Knight and Guy 6). In the Basilikon D ow n (1598), James VI of Scotland observes that instead o f relieving men from thoughts o f their worldly affairs, chess rather "filleth and troubleth men’s heads with as many fashions toys o f the play, as before it was filled with thoughts of his affairs" (qtd in Eales 78-79). Similarly, Robert Burton in his Anatomy o f M elancholy (1621) contends that occupying the mind with chess is unhealthy if it proceeds from too much study: "in such a case it may do more harm than good" (qtd in Eales 79). Thus, players were advised that chess was both beneficial and insidious, and that while it could illuminate those who studied its complexities, its status as a game put it in conflict with the serious concerns o f real life.
It was in the midst of this critical dd)ate that Shakespeare and Middleton chose to explore the metaphorical possibilities o f the chess game in their plays. However, although The Tempest, Women Beware Women, and A Game a t Chess are separated by only thirteen years, each o f these plays uses chess towards very different ends. Middleton employs an incidental chess scene in Women Beware Women, juxtaposing a game played between Livia and Leantio’s mother with the Duke’s seduction of Bianca, and shows the relationship between two different but related games o f deception. As Guardiano treacherously leads Bianca to her moral ruin, the players on the lower stage take part in a highly suggestive chess game:
LlVlA
Alas, poor widow, 1 shall be too hard for thee. MOTHER
Y ’are cunning at the game, I’ll be sworn, madam. LIVIA
She that can place her man well— MOTHER
As you do, madam. LIVIA
—As I shall, wench, can never lose her gam e... Here’s a duke Will strike a sure stroke for the game anon;
Your pawn cannot come back to relieve itself. (2.2.294-302)
Bianca is no match for the Duke’s indecent proposal just as Leantio’s mother is no match for Livia over the board: "The Duke’s cunning is paralleled with Livia’s below, in any event, and his language is filled with the rhetoric of masculine power...which asserts a familiar pattern of masculine domination/female subjection as well as the more gender- neutral master/subject hierarchical relation. In such a context, Bianca’s ’choice’ is really non-existent" (Carroll WBW, xxiv)." Indeed, the Duke and Livia are the superior gamesters because they understand how to take advantage o f their opponent’s position
“In "Middleton’s Chess Strategies in Women Beware Women " (1984), Neil Taylor and Bryan Loughrey argue that there are different ways o f looking at the degree to which Bianca is responsible for her own seduction: "If Bianca is merely a white pawn being taken by a black rook, then this scene describes comparative weakness yielding to a superior social, physical, and economic strength. If she is regarded as a piece controlled by a chess player, this makes her utterly helpless in the hands o f a manipulator from another realm. The third c a t^ o ry regards her as a player outwitted by her opponent’s guile, skill, and experience. The different categories provide different moral perspectives on her nature and behavior. By the terms o f the third category, for example, she must be held to be a free, responsible soul engaged in a sinful act. The second category, on the other hand, absolves her. The first proposes a minimal degree o f complicity in so far as pawns have the power to take rooks. But what is the identity o f her opponent, o f the player who moves her, o f the rook that takes her. And is she really taken by a rook? Is she not taken by a king?" (Taylor and Loughrey 349). However, if Middleton wants his audience to question the extent to which Bianca is culpable for her own seduction, he also wants them to understand that her identities as both a woman and a pawn doubly compromise her ability to defend against the Duke’s manoeuvres.
without compromising their own.
Middleton’s use o f an incidental chess scene and his handling o f Renaissance gender issues makes Women Beware Women a natural precursor to The Tenant qfW ildfell
H all. Indeed, in 'T h e Tenant o f W ildfell H all and Women Beware Women, " Inga-Stina
Ekeblad suggests that Bronte may have been drawing on Middleton’s play and perceives a similarity between how both texts use chess "as a structural device for superimposing an ominous set of circumstances on an apparently ordinary and harmless one" (Ekeblad 450). Furthermore, like Bronte, Middleton was not averse to exploring contemporary critical debates, and this is evidenced in Women Beware Women by his handling of the contentious issues regarding a woman’s place in society, as William C. Carroll remarks in his critical introduction to the play: "The play takes up several issues central to the contemporary women’s controversy, especially the arranged or enforced marriage and the right o f women to choose their husband" (xix).“
Although written ten years before Women Beware W onun, Shakespeare’s The
Tempest uses Prospero’s revelation of Ferdinand and Miranda at chess not simply as an
incidental chess scene or structural device to demonstrate that the lovers will be compatible or make an appropriate "King" and "Queen" when they return to Venice, but as a complex controlling metaphor for the relationships between different sets of
“Carroll also provides the reader with the historical context in which Middleton wrote Women Beware Women: "The controversy in England over a woman’s place became sharply focussed during the Reformation, as largely protestant ideas—of a woman’s right to choose her own husband, o f a woman’s relative equality within marriage, or the possibility o f divorce—came into widespread conflict with the medieval tradition. Queen Elizabeth’s ascent to the throne (1558) and eventual political dominance added contradictory ingredients to the dd)ate" (xviii).
characters in the play. The discovery scene’s complexity in part derives from the fact that it suggests Prospero is the grandmaster o f events on his island—educating his daughter to make her a worthy player and opponent for Ferdinand—while frustrating critical attempts to come to terms with what is happening in the game:
MIRANDA
Sweet Lord you play me false. FERDINAND
No, my dearest love, I would not for the world.
MIRANDA
Yes, for a score o f kingdoms you should wrangle. And I would call it fair play. (5.1.171-74)
Critics have glossed this scene in numerous ways, arguing that Miranda is playfully accusing her opponent o f cheating, or that Ferdinand has just won, or that the game has ended in stalemate, without fully recognizing that Shakespeare’s language makes it impossible for the reader to know precisely what is happening in the game. However, despite these conflicting critical judgments, the scene does suggest that Prospero has educated Miranda to be a careful and cautious player who, unlike her medieval chess playing counterparts, will not allow Ferdinand to win out o f love without informing him of her own complicity in the bargain.
When Hardy makes a direct allusion to The Tempest in his novel by describing Elfiride Swancourt as having a "Miranda-like curiosity," the critical reader is encouraged to make comparisons not simply between how these characters play chess against their male adversaries, but between how they are educated by their respective fathers in matters of social game-playing. Shakespeare’s play therefore proves useful in discussing A Pair
